If you are having difficulty in paying your service charge, please contact the Directors as soon as possible via the General Enquiry Form under the Home tab, or at lemchomeowners@aol.co.uk. Please be assured that any information you give us will be treated in the strictest confidence.

LEMC covenants to provide various services, and homeowners covenant to pay an estate charge to pay for these services. We are a non-profit making company and therefore arrears have to be pursued in full and without exception, according to our arrears policy timetable set out below.

You are "in arrears" if you fail to make your service charge payment or your first standing order instalment by 31st January.

Our initial response to cases of arrears is to open informal discussions; these may take place by email, telephone or face to face meeting and their purpose is to determine the amount outstanding and agree a timetable for repayment by standing order. Please note that because we cannot ask homeowners to subsidise other homeowners, we are unable to negotiate the amount of the underlying debt. Once initiated, informal discussions can extend for a period of up to one month and LEMC makes a charge of £60 for this service.

If no repayment plan has been agreed within four weeks, interest becomes payable on the debt at the rate of 4% from 1st February. At this stage, the Directors will adopt the court's pre action conduct rules and send you a formal 'Letter Before Claim.' Sent by post, this will set out all the relevant information including where to find out about the practice directions of the Court. You are required to respond to this Letter Before Claim' within 14 days and a further administration charge of £120 is payable to LEMC.

If no satisfactory response has been received within 14 days, the Directors will start proceedings. All solicitor and High Court Enforcement Group (bailiff) costs - and they can run into the £000's - will be added to your service charge demand to be paid, if applicable, out of the proceeds of the sale of your house.

We have made significant progress with our arrears collection programme in 2016. Former year's arrears can be viewed by looking at our balance sheets which are published as part of our certified accounts under the 'Accounts' tab.